Originally Posted by bendrixView Post Yeah, I did the entire series about until I did the first one, and Rockford’s dad is played by a surly hobo in the pilot instead of bemused vaudeville clown. All-time least favorite Rockford character: Richie, the spunky kid detective. Dude’s rat-a-tat-tat “Gee, whiz” delivery made my fingers bleed. The actor recently directed Don’t Mess with the Zohan, which kind of makes me hate him more. ETA: Hey, wait–the pilot I saw had Becker as Becker. Are you thinking of a different character? But you’re right in that the same actors ften played different characters.
Sorry, you’re right, I was thinking of Lt. Chapman. The guy who was always busting his balls, not the guy who was his friend.
And you’re right about the Dad. I saw the pilot towards the end of my viewing of all the episodes and it was amazing how much like a completely different show it felt.
I just wrapped up season 3 of the new Dr. Who (took me a little over a week to get through that) and now I have season 3 of Weeds sitting at home, so that’s up next. I’ve really got to bump the first season of The Wire to the top of my queue soon, as well as get started on BSG.
Originally Posted by dontEATnachosView Post Sorry, you’re right, I was thinking of Lt. Chapman. The guy who was always busting his balls, not the guy who was his friend. And you’re right about the Dad. I saw the pilot towards the end of my viewing of all the episodes and it was amazing how much like a completely different show it felt.
The pilot felt a lot grimmer than how the series panned out. Rockford’s character was more of an asshole and a little more ruthless, I remember.
As far as in-series continuity, there was none. I remember one ep, Rockford starts the show engaged to a woman we’ve never seen before who dies in that same episode and is never mentioned again.
Currently re-marathoning Carnivalé. The show’s so dense that having even a couple of hours between episodes practically guarantees some degree of confusion.
Non-serial shows infuriate me for marathon watching. I can hold out with the comedies for a bit longer, Simpons, etc, because I know they’re all relatively one and dones, but the dramatic stuff unnerves me for no particular reason. Sure, MacGuyver is fun and all, but if I’m plopping my ass down for several hours, I kinda want some narrative throughline. Were all shows in the 80s and before simply ‘shit happens, then we hit reset at the end?’
Ratty, The 70’s-80’s had the better cop shows, than today. The worst cop show of the 80’s was…Hill Street Blues. My top cop shows of those decades are…
T.J. Hooker
Hunter
Sledge Hammer
S.W.A.T.
C.H.I.P.S.
It is not that a reset button was hit, it was the fact most of the series in the 80’s were action shows. It was those two decades that made me a…Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fan of action films. The 80’s featured series like…The A-Team, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, The Master, The Fall Guy, Hunter, Streethawk, Automan, Highwayman, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., C.H.I.P.S., The Dukes Of Hazzard, The Greatest American Hero,V The Series, The Phoenix, Strike Force The 70’s featured alot of action as well, and the decade included…Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Wonder Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Police Woman, S.W.A.T., The Rookies, Charlies Angels, Vegas, The Incredible Hulk, The Mod Squad. The main point of these series were, that the good guys and gals would stop the bad guys, the day would be saved, and everything was all right in the end. Those two decades have far more interesting shows than we have today. The problem with today is that while Donald P. Bellisario is still producing series, Glen A. Larson, Stephen J Cannell, Frank Lupo, and the producers who delivered the action have all been replaced by ones favoring sitcoms, dramas, and other more humdrum entertainment.
Unless they were in syndication when I was growing up there are tons of television shows prior to 1990 that I completely missed out on. There are so many coming to DVD these days that I just have no idea what’s worth it and what isn’t.
I find that you can easily cut corners on your marathon for the non serialized shows by just watching the first and last ep of each season and maybe a few middle ones that would have aired during sweeps. That’s what I did with Sliders as those are the episodes that tend to be okay.
While I applaud the strides TV has taken with the long form storytelling (sometimes over a season and sometimes over a series) it has made jumping in a little tougher to do as well as make people squeamish about watching the show in the first place for fear of cancellation (which I’ve been burned with on Journeyman). Still, a premature end to a good serialized series is much better than a “sum up the premise in the theme song” style show. I can’t imagine being that compelled to revisit a show like that on DVD.
As for shows I want to see for the first time or revisit…
The Wire: I heard nothing but great things about this show as in “best ever on TV” and “like an epic novel” so I know it’s in my future but the problem is carving off a good bit of time to see the damn thing.
Daybreak: I understand this is a closed series and the premise sounds interesting. Plus I’m a Moon Bloodgood completist so there’s that.
24 Season 5 and 7: I’m tempted to marathon these in a unique way. Start the marathon whenever it starts on the show. If it’s midnight, then I start at midnight and go through each hour over the next 24 hours.
Kings: This seems like great future marathon material based on my blazing through the first 6 episodes in one day.
Eric Cordo, If you want the best of the 80’s action, check out…The A-Team and Hunter. Sure there are no deaths in…The A-Team, but there is a helluva lot of gunplay, Hannibal uses both a 45 cal and an M-60, over the top characters, and collateral damage. The best A-Team episodes, at least to me were the 4, 2 parters. The 4th season opener is priceless. Hannibal slowly goes up a building on a window washer’s rig, and since the buildings elevators were busy, Col. Decker and his men took the stairs up the 20+ stories, toting all their guns and equipment, til they get to the roof, where Hannibal lights his cigar, jumps off the building, his parachute opens, and the only words we hear are from the…Frustated Col. Decker “I just don’t believe this” Lance LeGalt as Col. Decker, The A-Team.
I´ve gotten Wild Palms as a present recently. Since it lasts only 300 minutes I guess it is perfect for a slow afternoon/night. I remember being really font of it when I saw it about a decade ago.
Curious if somebody can agree on that or should I push it back in order to rewatch West Wing. Again?
My friend has all the SHIELD DVDs as far as I know, and I’m thinking about borrowing them and diving in. I’ve seen most of season 2 already, but enjoyed what I saw(overly shaky handheld cam aside).
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Originally Posted by Spike MarshallView Post I just checked my figures and when I was watching Goku vs Frieza he spends 6 episodes getting his super saiyan on, so that’s 2 and a bit hours of a man screaming as his hair glows. Ah, my misspent youth.
Hahaha. A few of my friends were REALLY into DBZ for a time, and every fucking time I visited them for a week or two they were watching the “Frieza saga” that one of them had spent countless hours dubbing onto VHS tapes. I wouldn’t see them for a few days, pop in, and sure enough, there it was again. Nothing had really changed, but I had missed a bunch of episodes. Frieza kept getting bigger/tougher and everyone was still congregating on that afterlife island or whatever the hell it was. Goku… was still powering up(for another attack no doubt, but still). What a shitty show.
At least you have youth to blame. These guys were all in their mid twenties.
Okay, so I’ve now narrowed it down to The Shield as my definite next marathon. I’ve never seen a single episode and every commercial looked like “Ben Grimm doesn’t play by anybody’s rules… Except his OWN!”, but people love it so I’m hoping to as well.
Originally Posted by Keith FView Post Wiseguy was no slouch.
It’s the show that really capitalized on the multi-episode arc before it was the norm. From the tv characters thread:
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Wiseguy was a lot like a Batman film in structure - stiff leading man outclassed and outshined by a parade of great villains. Every ten episodes or so, they’d swap out the antagonist: Ray Sharkey as an Atlantic City gangster, Stanley Tucci as an Ivy-League mobster, Fred Phelps as a white supremacist, Tim Curry as a sleazy record exec, David Straithairn as a Twin Peaks-inspired weirdo sheriff - but none matched the insanity and watchability of Kevin Spacey’s paranoid, drug-addicted, superstitious sisterfucker & arms dealer Mel Profitt. Most tv dramas are formatted like Wiseguy these days; in 1987 it was revelatory, and Spacey was a big part of it.
I just finished rewatching the first (Sonny Steelgrave) arc; a few months ago I went through the Mel Profitt, white supremacist and garment trade arcs. Now I’m going to bat clean up on season 3 via a combo of abandoned DVD releases and Amazon downloads (check out the previews on Amazon if you’re unfamiliar with the show).